I was blessed to be one of many hundreds of men and women in attendance at the Campaign for Black Male Achievement’s 9th annual Rumble Young Man Rumble event at the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville Kentucky. This gathering in the words of it’s CEO Shawn Dove ‘has evolved into the premier gathering of movement-building intergenerational, cross-sector leaders in the Black male achievement space.’

You want to turn up. You want to go higher. You want that side hustle to blow up so you can glow up.

So why does day after day pass you by without seeing progress. “You're going to do it”, but that was 18 months ago since the idea came to you and you still don't even have a formal plan in place to take the first step, much less the next. (more…)

“You've got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology… What incredible benefits can we give to the customer?”

There are many things I enjoy, but I'm not certain they really make me ‘happy'. At the core of it all I realized a truth that is worth noting.

I can't be happy with someone or something, unless I myself am happy with me first!

DID YOU GET THAT? Lemme repeat…

I can't be happy (and this goes for you too) with anything or anyone in my life, unless I am happy with me first!

I say that because I can think of times past where I was genuinely unhappy with myself. Even as recent as Spring of this year, I fell into a funk I couldn’t find my way out of… nothing seemed to be going as I had planned and I became unhappy with myself and nothing else seemed to bring me out of it.

I even went so far as to stop my weekly inspirational emails for the first in a couple years, because inspiration for me came from feeling inspired and I was the furthest from that at the time (btw, thanks for all who inspired me to get the heck out of that dip and get back to the happy Stephen you all know and love 😉

So incase you are in a valley right now and trying to get other ‘things' or people to cheer you up and make you ‘happy’, know that you got to get right with you first. Be happy in knowing that you are a blessed being. You are love(d). You are alive. You opened your eyes today and have the same opportunity as does everyone else. We all were given the same 1,440 minutes today to make the most of our time in this day. Don’t allow life’s past disappointments, fears, challenges and pains hold you back any longer.

My pastor said something this weekend, that too often we await a zap from God to make us happy in an instant… but reminded me of the truth, that the miracles often happen in the journey. Despite whatever uphill battles, stress, disappointments are in the way right this minute, just be happy that you’re still on your pathway to where God is leading you. Be happy that you’ve still got the grace of time to see your way out of those issues and trust that you will see even more miracles unfold in your life.

I’m happy! I’m oh so happy with me. And as a result, I live to pour out that happiness in my wife, my daughter, my family and you, my friends.

1. INNOVATION is the specific tool of entrepreneurs, the means by which they exploit change as an opportunity for a different business or a different service. It is capable of being presented as a discipline, capable of being learned, capable of being practiced. Entrepreneurs need to search purposefully for the sources of innovation, the changes and their symptoms that indicate opportunities for successful innovation. And they need to know and to apply the principles of successful innovation.Peter Drucker

2. Perhaps our originality manifests itself most strikingly in what we do with that which we did not originate. To discover something wholly new can be a matter of chance, of idle tinkering, or even of the chronic dissatisfaction of the untalented.Eric Hoffer

3. CREATIVITY is thinking up new things. INNOVATION is doing new things.Theodore Levitt

4. The INNOVATION point is the pivotal moment when talented and motivated people seek the opportunity to act on their ideas and dreams.W.Arthur Porter

5. The greatness of art is not to find what is common but what is unique.Isaac Bashevis Singer

6. Create your own method. Don't depend slavishly on mine. Make up something that will work for you! But keep breaking traditions, I beg you.Konstantin Stanislavisky

7. Create your own method. Don't depend slavishly on mine. Make up something that will work for you! But keep breaking traditions, I beg you. Mark Twain

8. Innovation is the creation of the new or the re-arranging of the old in a new way.Michael Vance

9. When there is an original sound in the world, it makes a hundred echoes. John A. Shedd

10. One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.Walter Bagehot

Here are 55 awesome quotes referencing the topic of attitude. Please read through them and share your favorite quote in the comment section below. My favorites are bolded.

• Every exit is an entry somewhere. – Tom Stoppard

• While we are focusing on fear, worry, or hate, it is not possible for us to be experiencing happiness, enthusiasm or love. – Bo Bennett

• There are no menial jobs, only menial attitudes. – William John Bennett

• Whenever you're in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude. – Timothy Bentley

• I'd rather be a could-be if I cannot be an are;because a could-be is a maybe who is reaching for a star.I'd rather be a has-been than a might-have-been, by far;for a might have-been has never been, but a has was once an are. – Milton Berle

• Life is 10 percent what you make it and 90 percent how you take it. – Irving Berlin

• It is better to know nothing than to know what ain't so – Josh Billings

• Our attitudes control our lives. Attitudes are a secret power working twenty-four hours a day, for good or bad. It is of paramount importance that we know how to harness and control this great force. – Tom Blandi

• I never expect to lose. Even when I'm the underdog, I still prepare a victory speech. – H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

• You are more likely to act yourself into feelings, than feel yourself into action. – Jerome Bruner

• I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to earth. – Pearl Buck

• There are two big forces at work, external and internal. We have very little control over external forces such as tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, disasters, illness and pain. What really matters is the internal force. How do I respond to those disasters? Over that I have complete control. – Leo Buscaglia

• I would rather be first in a little Iberian village than second in Rome – Julius Caesar

• In the depths of winter I finally learned there was in me an invincible summer. – Albert Camus

• If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness and fears. – Glenn Clark

• You got to sing like you don't need the money; Love like you'll never get hurt; You got to dance like nobody's watchin'; It's gotta come from the heart if you want it to work. – Susanna Clark

• It's not the situation. It's your reaction to the situation. – Robert Conklin

• Life at any time can become difficult: life at any time can become easy. It all depends upon how one adjusts oneself to life – Moraji Desai

• It is not the position, but the disposition. – J.E. Dinger

• A man can believe a considerable deal of rubbish, and yet go about his daily work in a rational and cheerful manner. – Norman Douglas

• To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

• It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters. – Epictetus

• Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change – Golnik Eric

• Events will take their course, it is no good of being angry at them; he is happiest who wisely turns them to the best account. – Euripides

• It's how you deal with failure that determines how you achieve success. – David Feherty

• Our attitude towards what has happened to us in life is the important thing to recognize. Once hopeless, my life is now hope-full, but it did not happen overnight. The last of human freedoms, to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, is to choose one's own way. – Victor Frankl

• A positive attitude can really make dreams come true — it did for me. – Zina Garrison

• Nothing in life is so hard that you can't make it easier by the way you take it. – Ellen Glasgow

• Let's not be narrow, nasty, and negative. – Vernon Grounds

• Each experience through which we pass operates ultimately for our good. This is a correct attitude to adopt and we must be able to see it in that light – Raymond Holliwell

• Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it. – Lou Holtz

• It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it. – Lena Horne

• Those who believe that they are exclusively in the right are generally those who achieve something. – Aldous Huxley

• Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives. – William James

• The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind. – William James

• It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome. – William James

• Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude. – Thomas Jefferson

• Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity successful men act as though they have accomplished or are enjoying something. Soon it becomes a reality. Act, look, feel successful, conduct yourself accordingly, and you will be amazed at the positive results. – Dupree Jordan

• My attitude is never to be satisfied, never enough, never. – Bela Karolyi

• Up to a point a man's life is shaped by environment, heredity, and the movements and changes in the world around him. Then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate. Everyone has it within his power to say, ‘This I am today; that I will be tomorrow.' The wish, however, must be implemented by deeds. – Louis L’Amour

• A pessimist and an optimist, so much the worse; so much the better. – Jean De La Fontaine

• We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible.- Chretien Malesherbes

• We are injured and hurt emotionally, Not so much by other people or what they say and don't say, But by our own attitude and our own response. – Maxwell Maltz

• Take the attitude of a student, Never be too big to ask questions, Never know too much to learn something new. – Og Mandino

• What happens to a man is less significant than what happens within him. – Louis L. Mann

• A will finds a way. – Orison Swett Marden

• Attitudes are more important than facts – Karl Menninger

• One's destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things. – Henry Miller

• Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens. – John Homer Miller

• There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half-full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half-empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass! – Terry Pratchett

• You play the hand you're dealt. I think the game's worthwhile. – Christopher Reeve

• Great effort springs naturally from a great attitude. – Pat Riley

• This is the precept by which I have lived: Prepare for the worst; expect the best; and take what comes. – Robert E. Speer